Isolation and propagation of a segment of the simian virus 40 genome containing the origin of DNA replication.

Heteroduplex DNA molecules formed from two DNAs that differ from each other by a deletion can be cleaved at the mismatched region (a deletion loop) with the single-strand-specific S1 endonuclease. A heteroduplex DNA molecule, constructed from the DNA of simian virus 40 (SV40) mutant with a deletion of the map region 0.54-0.55 and the DNA of a second SV40 mutant having a deletion of the map segment 0.70-0.73, is cleaved twice with S1 endonuclease. One of the products is a DNA fragment of about 0.13 the length of SV40 DNA which contains the origin of SV40 DNA replication (0.67 on the SV40 DNA map).